Last month I found another irresistible 50¢ volume at the local used-book sale—The Secret Power Within: Zen Solutions to Real Problems by Chuck Norris, published in 1996. Mr. Norris is famous to some as a tough-guy action-movie star and martial artist. The book is a fast read, with 31 brief chapters. Alas, the commentary here isn't terribly well-written; nor is it terribly enlightening. Secret Power Within focuses on autobiographical anecdotes, mainly from the hand-to-hand unarmed combat world. The ideas are presented with an upbeat "take control of your life" self-help slant. But there are occasional interludes between self-congratulatory scenes. At the end of "Stay With the Moment", for instance:

I have found that to be here and not anywhere else is the key to total concentration. By living in the present, I am in full contact with myself and my environment; my energy is not dissipated and is always available. In the present there are no regrets, as there must be when thinking of the past, and worrying about the future only dilutes our awareness of the present. I have learned to focus all of my concentration on each individual moment, whether it's a voice on the other end of a phone line, a face looking at me from across a desk, that single eye of a camera, or that rose garden. There is only now, only the moment. There is nothing else. Nothing.

Not deep, not poetic ... a bit heavy-handed and first-person ... but not bad either.